When in calf due?

My cow is bagging up but she still has a little slack in her rear utter.Both sides are evenly rounded and huge(twins?). Yesterday my husband felt a kick on both sides and said the calves were really active.

My cow is bagging up but she still has a little slack in her rear utter.Both sides are evenly rounded and huge(twins?). Yesterday my husband felt a kick on both sides and said the calves were really active.

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I take it you don't have any breeding dates?
What breed is she?
How old is she?

We have cows with very good rumens and they have huge barrels, but twins are not common in Jerseys(don't know about other breeds). If you can bump a calf on both sides it may just be the calf is close to dropping. However, I found twins in a cow by bumping both sides. She was only bout 6 months along though.
When the calf is bumped can he tell about how big it is?

A cow can start sacking up anywhere from a month before calving to a day before calving or after for that matter. Ilse calved on the 2nd and didn't sack up completely until yesterday.
If she still has some slack in her rear udder then it looks like she has a little while to go yet. Have you been checking the tendons at the tail head? They need to soften before she can deliver, but in older animals this doesn't happen all the soon before calving.

I have a standard jersey maybe 6 years old.The last sign of heat was feb7th.She was pasture bred to a polled jersey just old enough to breed for the first time. DH said if she isn't carrying twins she is going to have a big calf.I need more information on how to find the tendons

Hi Bettie,
If your serviceing date is correct, your cow will be very close to calving which is why you can feel it bumping on both sides. As Roseanne says, Jerseys are not much given to having twins - although I have just weaned a set a Jersey/Friesian twins. Unfortunately they are a bull and a heifer so the heifer is likely to be sterile which is a pity as she is a lovely little thing. But I digress.

If you stand behind your cow when close to calving you should see two things. The tendons on either side of the tail relax making is droop and the vulva will become enlarged and swollen. The "springing" in the udder varies from cow to cow but the fact that it is, is reason to start keeping an eye on her.

She is either almost three weeks overdue or she is probably due around Wednesday.
It looks like she had another heat after the 7th of Feb, because she would have been due the 17th of November if that is what she had settled to. Three weeks for the next heat and you have a due date of around the tenth. Older canimals tend to go past their due date and have longer gestations. They also tend to have larger calves than their younger counterparts.
As you look at the cow's rear, look from the top of the tail head and you can see the points on either side. Between the tail head (the top) and back to those points are where the tendons are located. You can actually see them when they are taut. When she is close to calving these soften and droop down. If she starts leaking milk you should have a calf in the next 24 hours. It is hard, because each cow is different. How many times has she calved before this? You could ask her previous owner what to expect.

We've had three sets of twins in the last six years. One set of twin bulls (went as steers), a bull, heifer combo (the heifer died within an hour because she wasn't fully formed), and our last set were Frida and Freya (who are both in the milking herd now..they are Jersey/N. R. crosses). though twin numbers are rising and their is an interesting study about free martinism found in animal given Posilac and using Ovi-Synch.